Forecasting

Uncertainty and globalization For every trend, there is an uncertainty waiting to derail it. Some outside force prowling at the edges of visibility waiting to pounce on what so many consider an inevitability. I found it interesting this week that McKinsey put out a piece …

Stephen Jay Gould on Trends and Progress Stephen Jay Gould, in is 1988 Stanford Presidential Address “TRENDS AS CHANGES IN VARIANCE: A NEW SLANT ON PROGRESS AND DIRECTIONALITY IN EVOLUTION” talks about trends in scientific understanding, his ideas apply to many areas where the term “trend” …

Scenarios ask people to challenge their assumptions. Assumptions are a form of belief. Organizations and individuals assign values to uncertainties. The accumulation of these values become the basis for what I call the “myth of the future,” that narrative construct that people carry around with them that forms …

Download the entire paper here. 1. Workforce Dynamics Key Dynamic: Will the workforce effectively integrate, or will generational issues result in bifurcation? What skill gaps and needs for knowledge will emerge as each generation seeks to define its future? 2. Globalization Key Dynamic: Will the …

Watch an exclusive interview with Rafael Ramirez, Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme and Fellow in Strategy at the Saїd Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford University. A world expert on scenario planning and a founder of theories on the aesthetics of business, work …

The Lera blog gets it right today, quoting Gary Hamel: “The problem with the future is that it is different. If you are unable to think differently, the future will always arrive as a surprise.” Big Data won’t foretell the future unless the future is …

I received a trend notification today of “5 things that will change in the workforce in 2013.” (I will leave the name of the publication out.) One of those items was: the end of annual reviews. If this was a decade long forecast, the end …

If 2012 is the year of Big Data, it will likely be the year vendors and consultants start to over-promise, under-deliver, and put processes in motion that will generate insights and potential risks for years to come. BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER DANIEL W. RASMUS Read …

Interesting story on John Elfreth Watkins prediction made in The Ladie’s Home Journal back in December 1900. Interestingly accurate in some cases, but like Nostradamus or Biblical interpretation, we often see the past through the lens of the present and forgive the details. Some of …

Way back in 2005, Bloomberg Businessweek ran a piece called "A Tense Kodak Moment." "Low-margin digital sales aren’t picking up the slack of disappearing film profits, and debt is coming due,” the piece proclaimed. This provided some prescient perspective for Eastman Kodak’s (NYSE: EK) current …

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